atlastrekker.com

Sorry for the delay, I ended up having a different kind of schedule the last couple of days. I’ll give you two journal entries today, then we will be back on track for a while……

4/24

We are on day two of our San Diego to Seattle leg now. It’s been a pretty good day in all, we passed by Catalina Island, then the islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz later in the day. After that we went around the Point of Conception and the waves got real big. We did that about 5 pm and since then there have been several waves that have gone up and over the boat, and many more that have splashed the bridge deck pretty good. I would say that these waves have been in the 10 to 15 foot range from the information that I have gathered from the captain. It’s a sight to see, I’ll tell ya.

The crew is all beyond bored now. The hotel crew doesn’t have much to do but get sick and lay around, and everyone else is doing pretty much the same. I still haven’t even felt a little sick at all. I must have gotten my Grandpa’s sea legs or something, but for whatever reason, I am greatful. I may just have a future in boats, since I can hang with this. That makes me feel good.

I’m going back up to the bridge tonight for the midnight to 3am watch, and we have it all planned out that I am going to be getting some navigation lessons during that time. I know a little bit about maps and navigation, but nothing impressive and not enough to be good at it. I’ll give a report on what I learn tomorrow.

We will be up around Santa Cruz and then San Francisco tomorrow, I hope to get a good picture of the Golden Gate if we get close enough. That would be a good one for the old photo album. I’m probably going to break out the ham radio tomorrow as well, and see if I can open up the repeater on top of Mount Diablo. I’m pretty sure that I will be able to. It will be nice to chat with someone off the boat even if it is just for a minute.

4/25

I went up to the Bridge for my first lesson on navigation last night. It was very enlightening, simple but very informative. In case I didn’t explain, The second mate has a watch driving the boat between midnight and 3 am, so I offered to keep her company with the hopes that we could do a little trade. She would get some company on an otherwise boring and tiresome watch, and I would get some schooling on everything from how boats work, to navigation, to why living a sailors life is the best life. I’ve been up there twice so far,

First I got a lesson on what exactly Longitude and Latitude really are, and how we use them to find our position on the planet. Then once we got that all figured out, she explained how to take GPS coordinates and plot our position on a map. From there I asked how it was done before the GPS came along, and the answer is a device called a “sexton”, of which she explained as a way to locate yourself over time based on your position versus a star or the sun. I decided to take it on myself to get a little more info on this myself for future reference. After that she told me about waves, and how they move about the planet. It’s all so interesting, I could go on for a while about it, but I don’t really have room for it here.

After all that excitement I was headed down off the bridge and I got to see some of the coolest animals in the Sea, the Dahls Porpoises is the fastest predator known to man in the water. I got to see a couple of them right up along the side of the boat, then just as fast as they came up and were checking us out, they were gone. Such amazing and powerful creatures, I was buzzing for a 1/2 hour after that. Unfortunately no pictures or video of them, but I hear that we will see more once we get up to Alaska.

Other than those few things, life on the boat right now is pretty boring. Lot’s of cleaning, sleeping and reading. I’m still hoping to get in a little air time with the Ham radio in a bit here, I think we will be up around San Francisco around sunset today. I’ll let you know how that one goes.